Saturday, 3 March 2018

The economic and political cost of UK austerity

The UK now has a
surplus on the government’s current budget. George Osborne tweeted
“We got there in the end — a remarkable national effort. Thank
you.” This has been a remarkable period in UK macroeconomic
history, but not in the way Osborne thinks. A majority of economists
have always been against trying to reduce the deficit when interest
rates are stuck at their lower bound, a majority Osborne chose to
ignore. So what has been the cost of this “remarkable national
effort”?

The first time I
looked at this I did a very simple calculation. The OBR estimate
(here,
chart E) that fiscal consolidation took just under 1% out of the
economy in 2010/11 and over 1% in 2011/12. I wanted to get a simple
estimate that no one could suggest was too high. As actual output was
pretty flat until 2013, I assumed that output was 2% lower in 2011/12
(1% from the previous year plus the additional 1%) as a result of
fiscal consolidation, remained 2% lower in 2012/13, but then fully
recovered by 2013/14. That gave a total output loss of 5%, which is
almost £4,000 per household.

I think we can now
do things a little more scientifically. (If you are not into these
sorts of calculations, you can skip to the paragraph starting
£10,000.) I originally took the OBR estimates which had embedded in
them a declining influence on GDP over time, based on historical
experience. I think it is wrong to use these, because the reason that
the impact of fiscal consolidation normally declines is that monetary
policy counteracts it. This didn’t happen after the Great Recession
because interest rates were stuck at their lower bound and QE was
pretty ineffective. The OBR have now provided estimates of the
‘direct’ effect of fiscal consolidation, that take out the impact
of the decay from past consolidation. See here
for a detailed discussion.

The Impact of UK
fiscal consolidation on GDP

Fiscal impacts

10/11

11/12

12/13

13/14

14/15

15/16

16/17

17/18

Direct impact on growth

-0.8

-1.4

-0.6

-0.7

-0.3

-0.5

-0.2

0.0

Impact on level of GDP, no decay

-0.8

-2.2

-2.8

-3.5

-3.8

-4.3

-4.5

-4.5

80% decay

-0.8

-2.0

-2.2

-2.5

-2.3

-2.3

-2.1

-1.7

Cumulated loss

-2.8

-5.0

-7.5

-9.8

-12.1

-14.2

-15.9

The table above
starts in row 2 with the direct impact of fiscal consolidation (the
orange bars in Chart E). There are reasons for thinking these numbers
are too low, because they still embody some within year offset from
monetary policy, but lets go with them. Suppose there was no tendency
for GDP to rebound from these impacts (like kicking a ball each time
it stops). The third row computes the total impact on the level of
GDP in each year.

Assuming zero decay
from fiscal consolidation is too strong, even when interest rates are
at their lower bound. For example the impact of tax or transfer cuts
are likely to be greater in the short term than the longer term. QE
had some impact. So row 4 assumes a decay of 0.8 i.e. only 80% of the
fiscal consolidation remains in aggregate demand the following year.
This is very crude and no substitute for a proper model based
estimate, but I do not know of any recent model based estimates so it
is the best we can do. The final row shows the accumulated loss of
output: the total cost of fiscal consolidation over the whole period.
The final figure suggests the national effort to reduce the deficit
cost over 15% of GDP, which when GDP is around 2 trillion and there
are 27 million households, gives over £10,000 per household.

There is a big
objection that has been made to this calculation. If GDP had been 2% higher in
2016/17, say, the Bank of England would have raised interest rates
because that level of GDP would have been inflationary. In other
words I should be using a much higher decay factor as we come closer
to 2017. However there is an even stronger counterargument to that. I
argued here
that austerity was a cause of the productivity slowdown that began in
2012. By delaying the recovery for three years, austerity made firms
put productivity enhancing projects on hold, and we have seen no sign
as yet of any catch-up. I think it is reasonable to assume that the
productivity slowdown caused by austerity led to a reduction of at
least 2% of GDP from the supply side by 2015. That nullifies the
argument that the bank of England would have had to raise rates if
austerity had not happened. [1]

£10,000 for each
household is an average figure, but we know
that austerity did not fall evenly, but was concentrated on those at
the bottom end of the income distribution. It is certain that cuts to
social care and the NHS cost lives: it is just a question
of how many thousands of lives we are talking about.

And then there is
the political cost of austerity. The Coalition government, and
particularly our current Prime Minister, has used immigration as a
scapegoat for the impact of austerity. With the help of the right
wing press that scapegoating has worked. In particular, as I show
here,
many people believe that immigration has been bad for public services
like the NHS. In reality the opposite is true, but the government and
press have succeeded in creating what I call
a politicised truth: something that is believed to be true just
because politicians and the media keep saying it is.

The government may
well have pursued this line even if austerity had not happened, but
it gained some of its potency because austerity did lead to pressure
on public services like the NHS. That in turn helped create the
atmosphere required to gain a majority for leaving the EU. Austerity,
for this and other reasons, created the conditions that allowed
Brexit to happen. Those who think the UK descended into political
madness with Brexit are wrong: the madness started with austerity in
2010.

The final point is
that austerity was completely unnecessary. By austerity I mean
cutting the deficit when interest rates could not be cut to offset
the impact of fiscal consolidation. There is zero evidence that the
markets demanded austerity in 2010, and plenty of evidence they did
not. Even if the markets had panicked at the size of the deficit, the
Bank of England would have bought government debt as part of its QE
programme.

The unusual feature
of the Great Recession was not just its size, but that for the first
time since the 1930s governments started reducing spending in what should have been
the recovery period. They have never done that since the 1930s because
economic textbooks and state of the art models say it is a stupid and
costly thing to do.

Of course the
deficit needed to be reduced, but the government could easily have
waited for a few years until the recovery was well underway and
interest rates were well above their lower bound. The £10,000 per
household is not the cost of deficit reduction. If the government had
been patient it could have reduced the deficit with no cost at all.
Whatever the motive for George Osborne disregarding the lessons of
history, his actions have lost the average household £10,000 worth
of resources and caused additional ongoing economic and political
damage to the economy. Not so much a “remarkable national effort”
as a predictable man made disaster.

[1] There is an
argument that without austerity interest rate would have increased in
2011, because they nearly were anyway. But that would have been a
huge mistake by the Bank, who were panicked by higher inflation. One
of the reasons inflation was high was austerity: the increase in VAT.
So I think letting austerity off the hook and passing the hook to the
Bank of England because of something they might have done is not a
very convincing argument.

10 comments:

The Thatcherites came into office as a TINA party, causing massive unemployment with the MTFS, then as the Soviet Union began to collapse became a party riddled with Europaranoics and ERM fundamentalists, then in 2009 while in opposition they chose to oppose a fiscal stimulus which went some way towards dealing with the biggest and steepest fall in world trade ever seen caused by UK and US Conservative elite bankers in the autumn of 2008.

But Hooray for the internet and mass education post-16, which is fast on the way to making that Party unelectable on its own terms.

"Of course the deficit needed to be reduced.."As usual this framing is all wrong, it is cart before horse. The target and focus should always be real outcomes in the economy, the position of the deficit then accommodates those desired real outcomes. Otherwise you're in the same position as Osborne, prioritising numbers on a spreadsheet rather than real lives and real activities. And how does the government "cut the deficit"? It doesn't and it can't, it can only cut expenditure. The deficit is utterly dependent on the activity in the private sector and how much it is spending vs saving.

Its so strong in the public feeling that government spending is equivalent to houshold spending. When the public are tightening their belts we instinctively think government must tighten its belt.The lost opportunities caused by austerity are not missed since they were never realised.Optimistically though I am starting to hear the message on the media we need to turn this on its head and look more at our requirements and then make a plan as to how we are going to increase prosperity to afford those needs.Austerity is a negative process thats easy to achieve. Anyone can reduced spending to balance books. What takes real imagination is increasing prosperity so we all benifit.

First, let me say it's a privilege to read a blog by a researcher with the impressive experience you have.

That said, the model above makes no sense to me. Why would austerity have any NGDP impact, apart from slightly boosting real GDP when not at the zero lower bound, assuming monetary offset?

Second, my impression is that the monetary stimulus that began after Carney was hired was effective, if not as much as desired. The UK economy did seem to turn a corner, which is why conservatives are still in power. I think they're in power for worse, personally, by the way.

So, what am I missing? I'm thinking a better target regime could offer plenty of stimulus at the ZLB.

A point I keep trying to make about reframing the entire question; the size of the deficit - whether absolute or relative to GDP - is not the relevant measure. The discussion should focus on whether growth in nominal terms is higher than the deficit (both over GDP).

Implementing any kind of austerity before unemployment is at ZERO is criminal and warrants a jail sentence. There are things that are important and things that are not. There are 2 stats that should be measured in an economy:1) Unemployment - as in keep it at ZERO at all times - preferably with the implementation of a Job Gty as part of a Full Employment Fiscal Policy ( http://mmt-inbulletpoints.blogspot.com/2017/09/im-just-responding-to-various-economic.html ), and 2) Inflation - measure monthly and keep at say 4% - modulate through across-the-board tax increases - if necessary. (Shouldn't be necessary since hiring only occurs when there are excess resources in the economy (unemployed folk) and the public sector and private sector hiring of said unemployed folk increases the pie of goods and services - offsetting the increased currency issued, hence --> no inflation.- Everything else is an irrelevant variable - especially federal deficits and Federal Debt.

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